Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Family. Through the Incarnation, the Divine Word assumed a human body, entering into every aspect of human life, including family life, sanctifying it and making it a path to holiness.

Teacher and author Scott Hahn says,

The family is the key to Christmas. The family is the key to Christianity…When God came to save us, he made salvation inseparable from family life, manifest in family life. Since the family is the ordinary setting of human life, he came to share it, redeem it and perfect it. He made it an image and sacrament of a divine mystery. Salvation itself finds meaning only in familial relations.[1]

Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary in the Roman rite of the Catholic Church. Since the sixteenth century when St. Dominic was inspired to develop the devotion, the Rosary has been used to combat both physical and spiritual enemies.

This feast was instituted by Pope St. Pius V to honor Mary for the Christian victory over the Turks at Lepanto on October 7, 1571. He attributed the victory to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was invoked through praying the Rosary throughout Europe for protection from the Turkish invasion.